Meet Alejandro Rioja, The Bolivian Entrepreneur Building An Empire With Flux Ventures

May 1920:282017

Alejandro Rioja is an entrepreneur from Bolivia who started Flux Ventures, a holdings group that owns several companies such as Flux Chargers, Flux.LA and Future Sharks. (We covered each of them separately in previous stories). In this interview, he shares a bit about the story of Flux Ventures, how it got started, what his dreams with the company are and also some tips for other millennial entrepreneurs.

Tell us how Flux Ventures got started

The first company that started Flux Ventures was Flux Chargers, our portable charger ecommerce brand. The idea of Flux Chargers came about when me and my cofounder went to a party and one of our phones died. Desperately looking for a charger, we noticed that most of the then-current chargers had no built-in cables and were really bulky, so we decided to tackle that. Now, Flux Chargers have been sold in more than 90 countries.

What is your dream with Flux Ventures?

I look up to companies like Alphabet and Virgin Group, that is companies that are innovating in not just one but multiple industries. My dream with Flux Ventures is to become one of those companies. I hope to be able to continue launching brands and products that impact millions of people and take Flux Ventures to an eventual IPO.

What is your best tip for entrepreneurs?

People overestimate the time it takes to learn a skill and thus are fearful to learn. Any entrepreneur should be honing his or her skills and learning new ones on a daily basis to keep up with the competition. The amount of information, tutorials and guides available online (most of which are probably free) is all you need to transform an average entrepreneur into a stellar one. It just takes determination and perseverance.

What would you tell an entrepreneur that has an idea and wants to make it a reality?

1. Do some early market research and make sure that you’re building a product that people want. It is very important to test out your product hypothesis by asking people what they think about your solution and whether they would buy it or not. For Flux, this was physically going to the beach and selling chargers on the street.

2. Make sure you have the right team to build it, and that the team is motivated and understands the vision. If you and your team are not on the same page, you can’t make any real progress.

3. If you don’t possess a critical skill, either learn it or hire someone who can help you with it, but don’t linger on the lack of the skill for too long. The more you wait or complain, the longer it will take you to release your MVP.

4. Stop putting excuses and fearing the competition that much. In the early stages of a company it is the internal factors that kill it, not the established big players.

What other products and companies are in the pipeline for Flux Ventures?

The next products that I want to launch are a vegan protein bar, a restaurant chain and some bitcoin trading software. The beauty of creating your own company is that you can decide which direction you want to take next.

What’s something you have learned throughout your journey with Flux Ventures?

The biggest shocker for me was how many people were willing to help me along the way. Sometimes in entrepreneurship we are told that we should go at it alone and we portray images of entrepreneurs doing everything by themselves, but in most of the cases there were a lot of people who helped them, whether they were mentors or just people who provided feedback or worked behind the curtains. I am really thankful to have a solid team, a great network of friends and strong fan base that supports me.

Because I got all this help, I like to pay it back by helping people when they reach out to me. So, if you’re reading this and would like mentorship, SEO help or marketing, don’t hesitate to hit me up on Facebook.